Imperium

by Robert Harris

  Cicero himself did not speak from the rostra. Oddly enough, he had never yet done so, having decided early on to hold back until a moment in his career when he could make the maximum impact. He was naturally tempted to make this the issue on which he broke his silence, for it was a popular stick with which to beat the aristocrats. But in the end he decided against it, reasoning that the measure already had such overwhelming backing in the streets, he would be better employed behind the scenes, plotting strategy and trying to tempt over waverers in the Senate. For this reason, his crucial importance has been frequently neglected. Instead of the fiery public orator he played the moderate for a change, working his way up and down the senaculum, listening to the complaints of the pedarii, promising to relay messages of commiseration and entreaty to Pompey, and dangling—very occasionally—half offers of preferment to men of influence. Each day a messenger came to the house from Pompey’s estate in the Alban Hills bearing a dispatch containing some fresh moan or inquiry or instruction (“Our new Cincinnatus does not seem to be spending much time plowing,” observed Cicero with a wry smile), and each day the senator would dictate to me a soothing reply, often giving the names of men it might be useful for Pompey to summon out for interview. This was a delicate task, since it was important to maintain the pretense that Pompey was taking no further part in politics. But a combination of greed, flattery, ambition, realization that some kind of special command was inevitable, and fear that it might go to Crassus eventually brought half a dozen key senators into Pompey’s camp, the most significant of whom was Lucius Manlius Torquatus, who had only just finished serving as praetor and was certain to run for the consulship the following year.

  Crassus remained, as always, the greatest threat to Cicero’s schemes, and naturally he was not idle during this time, either. He, too, went around making promises of lucrative commissions, and winning over adherents. For connoisseurs of politics it was fascinating to observe the perennial rivals, Crassus and Pompey, so evenly poised. Each had two tame tribunes; each could therefore veto the bill; and each had a list of secret supporters in the Senate. Crassus’s advantage over Pompey was the support of most of the aristocrats, who feared Pompey more than any other man in the republic; Pompey’s advantage over Crassus was the popularity he enjoyed among the masses on the streets. “They are like two scorpions, circling each other,” said Cicero, leaning back in his chair one morning, after he had dictated his latest dispatch to Pompey. “Neither can win outright, yet each can kill the other.”

  “Then how will victory ever be achieved?”

  He looked at me, then suddenly lunged forward and slammed his palm down on his desk with a speed that made me jump. “By the one which strikes the other by surprise.”

  At the time he made that remark there were only four days left before the lex Gabinia was due to be voted on by the people. He still had not thought of a means of circumventing Crassus’s veto. He was wearied and discouraged, and once again began to talk of our retiring to Athens and studying philosophy. That day passed, and the next, and the next, and still no solution presented itself. On the final day before the vote, I rose as usual at dawn and opened the door to Cicero’s clients. Now that he was known to be so close to Pompey, these morning levees had doubled in size compared to the old days, and the house was crowded with petitioners and well-wishers at all hours, much to Terentia’s annoyance. Some of them had famous names, for example, on this particular morning, Antonius Hybrida, who was the second son of the great orator and consul Marcus Antonius, and who had just finished a term as tribune; he was a fool and a drunk, but protocol dictated he would have to be seen first. Outside it was gray and raining and the callers had brought in with them a wet-dog smell of moist, stale clothes and damp hair. The black and white mosaic floor was streaked with tracks of mud, and I was just contemplating summoning one of the household slaves to mop up when the door opened again and who should step in but Marcus Licinius Crassus himself. I was so startled, I briefly forgot to be alarmed, and gave him as natural a greeting as if he had been a nobody come to request a letter of introduction.

  “And a very good morning to you, Tiro,” he returned. He had only met me once, yet he still remembered my name, which frightened me. “Might it be possible to have a word with your master?” Crassus was not alone but had brought with him Quintus Arrius, a senator who followed him around like a shadow, and whose ridiculously affected speech—always adding an aspirate to a vowel: “Harrius” was how he pronounced his name—was to be so memorably parodied by that cruelest of poets, Catullus. I hurried through into Cicero’s study, where he was doing his usual trick of dictating a letter to Sositheus while signing documents as quickly as Laurea could produce them.

  “You will never guess who is here!” I cried.

  “Crassus,” he replied, without looking up.

  I was immediately deflated. “You are not surprised?”

  “No,” said Cicero, signing another letter. “He has come to make a magnanimous offer, which is not really magnanimous at all, but which will show him in a better light when our refusal to agree to it becomes public. He has every reason to compromise, while we have none. Still, you had better show him in before he bribes all my clients away from me. And stay in the room and take a note, in case he tries to put words into my mouth.”

  So I went out to fetch Crassus—who was indeed glad-handing his away around Cicero’s tablinum, to the awed amazement of all concerned—and showed him into the study. The junior secretaries left, and there were just the four of us—Crassus, Arrius, and Cicero all seated, and myself, standing in the corner and taking notes.

  “You have a very nice house,” said Crassus, in his friendly way. “Small but charming. You must tell me if you think of selling.”

  “If it ever catches fire,” responded Cicero, “you will be the first to know.”

  “Very droll,” said Crassus, clapping his hands and laughing with great good humor. “But I am perfectly serious. An important man such as yourself should have a larger property, in a better neighborhood. The Palatine, of course. I can arrange it. No, please,” he added, as Cicero shook his head, “do not dismiss my offer. We have had our differences, and I should like to make a gesture of reconciliation.”

  “Well, that is handsome of you,” said Cicero, “but alas, I fear the interests of a certain gentleman still stand between us.”

  “They need not. I have watched your career with admiration, Cicero. You deserve the place you have won in Rome. It is my view that you should achieve the praetorship in the summer, and the consulship itself two years after that. There—I have said it. You may have my support. Now what do you say in reply?”

  This was indeed a stunning offer, and at that moment I grasped an important point about clever men of business: that it is not consistent meanness which makes them rich (as many vulgarly assume), but rather the capacity, when necessary, to be unexpectedly, even extravagantly generous. Cicero was entirely caught off balance. He was effectively being offered the consulship, his life’s dream, on a platter—an ambition he had never even dared voice in the presence of Pompey, for fear of arousing the great man’s jealousy.

  “You overwhelm me, Crassus,” he said, and his voice was so thick with emotion he had to cough to clear it before he could continue. “But fate has once again cast us on different sides.”

  “Not necessarily. On the day before the people vote, surely the time has arrived for a compromise? I accept that this supreme command is Pompey’s conception. Let us share it.”

  “A shared supreme command is an oxymoron.”

  “We shared the consulship.”

  “Yes, but the consulship is a joint office, based on the principle that political power should always be checked. Running a war is entirely different, as you know far better than I. In warfare, any hint of division at the top is fatal.”

  “This command is so huge, there is easily room enough for two,” said Crassus airily. “Let Pompey take the east, and I the west.
Or Pompey the sea and I the land. Or vice versa. I do not mind. The point is that between us, we can rule the world, with you as the bridge that links us.”

  I am sure that Cicero had expected Crassus to come in threatening and aggressive, tactics which a career in the law courts had long since taught him how to handle. But this unexpectedly generous approach had him reeling, not least because what Crassus was suggesting was both sensible and patriotic. It would also be the ideal solution for Cicero, enabling him to win the friendship of all sides. “I shall certainly put your offer to him,” promised Cicero. “He shall have it in his hands before the day is out.”

  “That is no use to me!” scoffed Crassus. “If it were a matter of merely putting a proposal, I could have sent Arrius here out to the Alban Hills with a letter, could I not, Arrius?”

  “Hindeed you could.”

  “No, Cicero, I need you actually to bring this about.” He leaned in close and moistened his lips; there was something almost lecherous about the way Crassus talked of power. “I shall be frank with you. I have set my heart upon resuming a military career. I have all the wealth a man could want, but that can only be a means and not an end in itself. Can you tell me what nation ever erected a statue to a man because he was rich? Which of the earth’s many peoples mingles the name of some long-dead millionaire in its prayers because of the number of houses he once possessed? The only lasting glory is on the page—and I am no poet!—or on the battlefield. So you see, you really must deliver the agreement of Pompey for our bargain to stick.”

  “He is not a mule to be driven to market,” objected Cicero, whom I could see was starting to recoil again from the crudeness of his old enemy. “You know what he is like.”

  “I do. Too well! But you are the most persuasive man in the world. You got him to leave Rome—do not deny it! Now surely you can convince him to come back?”

  “His position is that he will come back as the sole supreme commander, or he will not come back at all.”

  “Then Rome will never see him again,” snapped Crassus, whose friendliness was beginning to peel away like a thin layer of cheap paint on one of his less salubrious properties. “You know perfectly well what is going to happen tomorrow. It will unfold as predictably as a farce at the theater. Gabinius will propose your law and Trebellius, on my behalf, will veto it. Then Roscius, also on my instructions, will propose an amendment, setting up a joint command, and dare any tribune to veto that. If Pompey refuses to serve, he will look like a greedy child, willing to spoil the cake rather than share it.”

  “I disagree. The people love him.”

  “The people loved Tiberius Gracchus, but it did him no good in the end. That was a horrible fate for a patriotic Roman, which you might do well to remember.” Crassus stood. “Look to your own interests, Cicero. Surely you can see that Pompey is leading you to political oblivion? No man ever became consul with the aristocracy united against him.” Cicero also rose and warily took Crassus’s proffered hand. The older man grasped it hard and pulled him close. “On two occasions,” he said in a very soft voice, “I have offered the hand of friendship to you, Marcus Tullius Cicero. There will not be a third.”

  With that, he strode out of the house, and at such a pace I could not get in front of him to show him out, or even open the door. I returned to the study to find Cicero standing exactly where I had left him, frowning at his hand. “It is like touching the skin of a snake,” he said. “Tell me—did I mishear him, or is he suggesting that Pompey and I might suffer the same fate as Tiberius Gracchus?”

  “Yes: ‘a horrible fate for a patriotic Roman,’” I read from my notes. “What was the fate of Tiberius Gracchus?”

  “Cornered like a rat in a temple and murdered by the nobles, while he was still tribune, and therefore supposedly inviolable. That must have been sixty years ago, at least. Tiberius Gracchus!” He clenched his hand into a fist. “You know, for a moment, Tiro, he almost had me believing him, but I swear to you, I would sooner never be consul than feel that I had only achieved it because of Crassus.”

  “I believe you, senator. Pompey is worth ten of him.”

  “A hundred, more like—for all his absurdities.”

  I busied myself with a few things, straightening the desk and collecting the morning’s list of callers from the tablinum, while Cicero remained motionless in the study. When I returned again, a curious expression had come over his face. I gave him the list and reminded him that he still had a houseful of clients to receive, including a senator. Absentmindedly he selected a couple of names, among them Hybrida’s, but then he suddenly said, “Leave things here to Sositheus. I have a different task for you to perform. Go to the National Archive and consult the Annals for the consular year of Mucius Scaevola and Calpurnius Piso Frugi. Copy down everything relating to the tribuneship of Tiberius Gracchus and his agrarian bill. Tell nobody what you are doing. If anyone asks you, make something up. Well?” He smiled for the first time in a week and made a shooing gesture, flicking his fingers at me. “Go on, man. Go!”

  After so many years in his service I had become used to these bewildering and peremptory commands, and once I had wrapped myself up against the cold and wet I set off down the hill. Never had I known the city so grim and hard-pressed—in the depths of winter, under a dark sky, freezing, short of food, with beggars on every corner, and even the occasional corpse in the gutter of some poor wretch who had died in the night. I moved quickly through the dreary streets, across the Forum and up the steps to the archive. This was the same building in which I had discovered the meager official records of Gaius Verres, and I had been back on many errands since, especially when Cicero was aedile, so my face was familiar to the clerks. They gave me the volume I needed without asking any questions. I took it over to a reading desk beside the window and unrolled it with my mittened fingers. The morning light was weak, it was very drafty, and I was not at all sure what I was looking for. The Annals, at least in those days before Caesar got his hands on them, gave a very straight and full account of what had happened in each year: the names of the magistrates, the laws passed, the wars fought, the famines endured, the eclipses, and the other natural phenomena observed. They were drawn from the official register that was written up each year by the pontifex maximus, and posted on the white board outside the headquarters of the college of priests.

  History has always fascinated me. As Cicero himself once wrote: “To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?” I quickly forgot the cold and could have spent all day happily unwinding that roll, poring over the events of more than sixty years before. I discovered that in this particular year, Rome’s six hundred and twenty-first, King Attalus III of Pergamon had died, bequeathing his country to Rome; that Scipio Africanus Minor had destroyed the Spanish city of Numantia, slaughtering all of its five thousand inhabitants, apart from fifty whom he saved to walk in chains in his triumph; and that Tiberius Gracchus, the famous radical tribune, had introduced a law to share out the public land among the common people, who were then, as always, suffering great hardship. Nothing changes, I thought. Gracchus’s bill had infuriated the aristocrats in the Senate, who saw it as threatening their estates, and they had persuaded or suborned a tribune named Marcus Octavius to veto the law. But because the people were unanimous in their support for the bill, Gracchus had argued from the rostra that Octavius was failing in his sacred duty to uphold their interests and had called upon the people to begin voting Octavius out of office, tribe by tribe. When the first seventeen of the thirty-five tribes had voted overwhelmingly for Octavius’s removal, Gracchus had suspended the polling and appealed to him to withdraw his veto. Octavius had refused, whereupon Gracchus had “called upon the gods to witness that he did not willingly wish to remove his colleague,” had balloted the eighteenth tribe, and achieved a majority, and Octavius had been stripped of his tribuneship (�
��reduced to the rank of a private citizen, he departed unobserved”). The agrarian law had then been passed. But the nobles, as Crassus had reminded Cicero, had exacted their revenge a few months later, when Gracchus had been surrounded in the temple of Fides, beaten to death with sticks and clubs, and his body flung in the Tiber.

  I unfastened the hinged notebook from my wrist and took out my stylus. I remember how I glanced around to make sure I was alone before I opened it and started copying the relevant passages from the Annals, for now I understood why Cicero had been so emphatic about the need for secrecy. My fingers were freezing and the wax was hard; the script I produced was atrocious. At one point, when Catulus himself, the patron of the archive, appeared in the doorway and stared straight at me, I felt as if my heart would shatter the bones of my breast. But the old man was nearsighted, and I doubt he would have known who I was in any case; he was not that sort of politician. After talking for a while with one of his freedmen, he left. I finished my transcription and almost ran out of that place, down the icy steps and back across the Forum toward Cicero’s house, carrying my wax tablet pressed close to me, sensing I had never done a more significant morning’s work in my life.

  When I reached the house, Cicero was still ensconced with Antonius Hybrida, although as soon as he saw me waiting near the door, he drew their conversation to a close. Hybrida was one of those well-bred, fine-boned types, who had ruined himself and his looks with wine. I could smell his breath even from where I stood: it was like fruit rotting in a gutter. He had been thrown out of the Senate a few years previous for bankruptcy and loose morals—specifically, corruption, drunkenness, and buying a beautiful young slave girl at an auction and living openly with her as his mistress. But the people, in that peculiar way of theirs, rather loved him for his rakish ways, and now that he had served a year as their tribune, he had worked his way back into the Senate. I waited until he had gone before I gave Cicero my notes. “What did he want?” I asked.